Racial Literacy and Dharma Monthly Book Club – Wednesday May 22

All people are raised with cultural conditioning around race. If we were raised in the U.S., and especially if we identify as “white” or “European-descended,” our conditioning tends to include a value for colorblindness, which can make it difficult for to acknowledge, let alone investigate, our racial biases. This book group is intended to expand our racial literacy, as Micheal Eric Dyson puts it, to develop a more intimate understanding together of racial oppression and the suffering it causes across color lines in the U.S., and to engage this as our practice in Zen of turning towards suffering as the gate of awakening and liberation.

Pre-registration for the group is requested each month, so that everyone can have the page assignments, articles, and to consider the agreements before each meeting.

The two teachers facilitating the group identify as white, U.S. citizens, and Zen Buddhist priests. We understand the limitations of our experiences in relation to race, and strive to bring cultural humility to our facilitation of these groups.

Next Meeting: Wednesday 6-8pm

Book: “Awakening Together” by Larry Yang

Chapter 4 of “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo

Rev angel Kyodo williams’ article, “Your Liberation is on the Line.”

PAST BOOKS/ READING

April 2019 readings: “The Way of Tenderness” by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel and the third chapter of “White Fragility” by Robin DeAngelo.

March 2019 readings: Becoming by Michelle Obama

review first two chapters of White Fragility

article: “Your Liberation is on the Line” by angel Kyodo williams in Buddhadharma magazine, Spring 2019

February 2019 Book: The 57 Bus by Dashka Slate.

January 2019 book: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

December 2018 book: Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Book for November 2018: Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora.

Book for Oct. 2018: Mindful of Race by Ruth King

Book for Sept. 2018 : summer reading (see below)

Summer Reading:For July and August, we are suggesting three books: one non-fiction, one fiction, and one Dharma and Race specific.

For the Summer Reading, we are asking that everyone read at least one book…and all three if possibleThe New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
Now and then a book comes along that might in time touch the public and educate social commentators, policymakers, and politicians about a glaring wrong that we have been living with that we also somehow don’t know how to face. The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness…is such a work.” -The New York Review of BooksBeloved, by Toni Morrison
Puliter Prize winner for fiction in 1986.A New York Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked it the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006. This novel looks at the family of Sethe in the aftermath of escaping slavery.

Radical Dharma, by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah
Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large and Buddhist communities in particular, this urgent call to action outlines a new dharma that takes into account the ways that racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening.

June 2018:When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrice Khan-Cullors and asha bandale

May 2018: Homegoing by Ya’a Gyasi

April 2018:So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

March 2018:Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward and instead of an article, we are asking members to watch the film “I Am Not Your Negro” (available through PBS and streaming through Amazon)

February 2018 : Waking Up White by Peggy Irving

It was decided by the January group that going forward we will read one book per month, so beginning in Feb. and going forward we will read the whole book for each meeting.